This is Hacker Public Radio episode 3,787 for Tuesday 7 February 2023.
Today's show is entitled.
It shouldn't crackle like that.
It is hosted by Rowan and is about 10 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is Rowan describes fixing the wiring to a ceramic Christmas tree.
I welcome to another episode of Hacker Public Radio.
This is Rowan and today I'll be giving you a short Christmas story.
So the Friday before Christmas, my partner's mother called me and asked if I had a short
indoor extension cord she could borrow.
When I arrived at her house, which takes all of about 30 seconds to get to, she lives in
the next town hometown.
She showed me her display of ceramic Christmas trees for what she needed to extension
cord.
These decorations have two pieces of base which holds a small light bulb and then the tree
which sits over the light and has translucent colored plastic Christmas lights attached
to it which are illuminated by the light bulb inside this tree.
There were four ceramic trees of bearing heights from about 14 inches, about 36 centimeters
to six inches, about 15 centimeters tall, while helping to arrange each of the trees electrical
cords and plugging them into the extension cable.
One of the trees wouldn't stay lit.
If you turn the base or move the cord, it would light back up but then it would go out
once you took the pressure off the cord.
I could also hear crackling at times when moving the cord.
Not a sound you want to hear in an electrical ornament.
After separating the pieces and turning over the base, I could see not only the sparks
but why it was sparking.
At some point one of the wires had come loose from the light socket and was taped back into
place with what looks like duct tape.
The ornament was made in the 1950s.
I'm not sure when the repair was made, as ornaments have been passed through the family
over the years.
The plastic which held the wire in place had failed over the years and the tape was also
failing from the electric sparks that would occur when the wire was moved around.
You can see burn marks on the tape around the wire.
At first I thought I might be able to fix the side with the bad wiring, maybe saw to
the wire into the socket to give it a good electrical connection and then use electrical
tape to cover the hole where the socket casing had failed.
And in the process of taking the wire out and removing all the duct tape, the socket's
electrical contact fell out.
I'd say this was for the best, the whole socket needed replacing.
My biggest issue is I wasn't sure I could find a replacement socket that would fit through
the hole in the ceramic base.
So I'll do a last-minute Christmas shopping.
The next day I'm Christmas Eve.
I stopped at one of the big box hardware stores to browse the electrical section and see if
I could find a replacement socket that might work.
Of course I hadn't brought either the old socket or the light bulb, but I found a small
rack with replacement sockets that looked like it might work.
The Camphila cantalobra style socket replacement looked like the correct size for both the
light bulb and the hole in the base of the ornament.
Once I was home, I tested the fit of the light bulb and the socket was the correct size.
It was just a little too big for the hole in the base, the new white socket, but I was
hoping I could just grind off some of the raised plastic lettering and maybe a little off
the sides of the new socket here and there to get it to fit in the base.
Was leary of using my dermal tool to make the hole bigger in the ceramic base.
I didn't want it to crack or chip the finish.
I did end up doing both grinding down some of the plastic on the replacement socket and
grinding out the hole in the ceramic base.
I first, like I had sort of, there was raised lettering on the side of the new socket.
I ground those down with the Dremel and then there were just some places when I was trying
to fit it in where I felt like it was a little tight, so I was just trying to grind a
little off the side here and there.
I was getting close, but I noticed that like I was starting to get take too much off
of places on the new socket and I didn't want to destroy it and compromise its integrity.
So I did very carefully start grinding the hole, trying to make it a little more circular
in the ceramic, I do a little bit and then I tested to see if the socket would go down
through and I finally did and then of course it wasn't a snug fit, so the socket went down
in all the way.
So the new socket sort of had this hexagonal end on it.
So that would keep it from sliding all the way through the hole, which was good, but
it also the new head socket had this piece of aluminum, it was sort of like an extender
to keep the wires going straight out and keep the wires from like bending too close to
the end of the plastic socket coming out the bottom of it.
And so when the new socket slid all the way down to the base it was sort of sticking out
the bottom, so like you wouldn't have been able to have the Christmas tree stands sit nice
and flat.
So I did have to have it raised about a quarter inch, I'm not quite sure how many millimeters
that is, and so I took a piece of electrical tape and I did end up playing electrical
tape on it, I wrapped it around the new socket and then that provided enough tension
then that I sort of could put the offset, the candle up, the candle up, the candle up,
the socket and the base enough so that the wires didn't stick out the bottom and it
was very snug at that point, I thought you could probably get away with just leaving
it like that, but I also wanted to make sure that I was
better physically secured in there, so we have a glue gun somewhere in the house, I still
haven't found it, usually our girls are not that great up on any things away, but I think
I was the last one to use the glue gun, so that's probably what I mean, I did find
a big bag of glue sticks, so that was beneficial, so what I did, I don't do this at home
kids, a desottering gun, which is basically like a very hot, very concentrated hair dryer,
and I figured if it would melt solder, it would, you know, soften a glue stick, so I was
able to carefully sort of press the glue stick at the edge where the candle uper was
coming through the base on inside and blow, on the low setting, use the hot air, desotter
to soften the glue and sort of push the glue stick around, but of course as you're pushing
the glue stick, it's getting closer into the base, which means my fingers are getting
closer into the very hot stream of air, and so it's only able to make it about three
quarters of the way around before it just was like too hot to do, so I sort of pulled
the glue stick off, and I let it cool just a little bit, and then I just took my finger
around and smoothed the glue around the base of where the candle uper outlet goes through
the base, and actually it turned out looks pretty good, and it definitely provided that
extra stability to hold the socket in the base, the next step then was to connect the
old cord, which the old cord was still in good shape except right where it had gone into
the old socket, so I cut that off the one side that was still good and attached, and then
I even did up and then stripped the ends for a new connection, and then the new socket had
the two wires coming out of it with about six inches of tail to give you room to mess with it,
and I had purchased two small of the screw nuts connectors, so it is nicely screwed together
good electrical connection, and probably the recommended safe way of connecting to electrical
cables, cords, and so that I had already, you know, strung the old thing back through the whole
on the side of the base, wire nutted them together, and it all fit back in under the base,
nicely, I could say it would flip the base over, plug it in, it lit up, put the top on it,
sits nice and level, and the tree lights up, and hopefully will be good for another 50 years or so,
and not be a fire threat when you plug it in. So anyway, that was my exciting Christmas Eve,
that's sort of my guess my Christmas Eve present to my soon-to-be mother-in-law, and I hope
you enjoyed this episode of making Christmas a little safer.
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